One of my New Year's resolutions is to read a book a month. That's a pretty reasonable resolution, right? Last year, I would read more than one book a month easily. I also knew the first book I would read this year would be a Christmas gift, We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to actually start reading this book this month, but I finished it last week in a day or so. It's easy to read and also enjoyable to read. I regretfully had to set it down to sleep at 4:00 am.
This book was recommended to me by a long time friend, and her sales pitch wen't something along the lines of "It's really sad, the main character is LGBT+, and there are aliens."
She had me at "it's really sad". I know, it's weird that I really like sad stories. Some may call me a masochist, but I just say I like emotional plots. If I cry, that really says something about the book. That being said, I didn't cry while reading We Are The Ants. I may have been too focused on the aliens and the world ending.
The things I liked the most about it was it's very casual alien plot line. Within the first chapter, we learn that Henry has been regularly abducted by aliens since he was thirteen years old. The aliens usually just do weird experiments on him, but they recently communicated to him that the world was going to meet it's doom. They gave him the choice to either press a button and save the world or not press it and end on January 29th, 2016.
Henry's entire life is already falling apart. With his grandmother falling victim to Alzheimers, his mother struggling to pay the bills, his brother dropping out of college after getting his girlfriend pregnant, teenagers verbally and physically abusing him at school, and his boyfriend committing suicide a year ago, he decides to not press the button.
I thought I knew what I was going to get when I picked up this book, but it's nothing like I could imagine. The self-discovery, existential crises, and romance doesn't seem like it would fit so well with sci-fi slug alien abductions, but this book proved that wrong.
I could sit here and type out the entire plot of this book, but you would still be missing out on the experience of reading it. There is such a wide range of emotions We Are The Ants made me feel, and that is one of the reasons why I enjoyed this book so much.
I'm really happy that this was my first book of the year and I'm already starting on book number two! The hardest part of reading is starting, so try reading even just one book this year. It's good for you.
